Each day over 10,000,000+ related keyword searches are conducted for people trying to find people. If searches for related keywords include electronic white pages, dating and business networking are counted, the total would be over 40,000,000+, which would make searching for people one of the most searched subject categories in the world online.
Today, there are 2.3 billion Internet connected users around the world, and 6 billion mobile device owners and are growing exponentially. Searching and Social Networking is effecting and influencing all users, businesses and advertisers globally. “Electronic commerce,” commonly known as “e-commerce,” is a type of industry where the buying and selling of products or services is conducted over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks such as cloud networks.
Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at one point in the transaction's life-cycle, although it may encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail, mobile devices social media, etc.
“Social commerce” is a subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction, and user contributions to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services. More succinctly, social commerce is the use of social network(s) in the context of e-commerce transactions.
Examples of social commerce include customer ratings and reviews, user recommendations and referrals, social shopping tools (sharing the act of shopping online), forums and communities, social media optimization, social applications and social advertising.
A “social media ecosystem” is a system form by an interaction of a community of social media users with their environment including the Internet and social media sites (e.g., FACEBOOK, TWITTER, E-HARMONY, MATCH.COM, SOCIAL LIVING, GROUPON, etc.). It is a system of interconnecting and interacting parts. A social media ecosystem centers on a consumer experience. Participants in the ecosystem are based on five different types of social behaviors: Creators (e.g., publish, maintain, upload electronic content); Critics (e.g., comment, rate); Collectors (e.g., save, share); Joiners (e.g., connect, unite); and Spectators (e.g., read). While the platforms provide transmission of messages, the spheres of influence now become the consumers who engage in conversations about products and services via the various social media platforms.
However, there is not a “top of mind” or superior people search solution to search, connect and communicate with a desired person instantly. Thus, it is desirable to solve some of the problems associated with searching for people online in a social media ecosystem.